February 26, 2001

Taken from http://www.itnetcentral.com/article.asp?id=2088&icontent=1234

THE rather heavyset man at the podium was in a wistful, nostalgic mood. "Believe it or not, I'm going to miss Erap," he remarked. "He made it so easy."

We're not talking about Mark Jimenez, Jaime Dichavez, or even Atong Ang dwelling on the recent past. The occassion was a forum recently organized by an NGO called the Foundation of Media Alternatives (FMA) entitled "Erap entangled in the Web" discussing the role of technology in the movement to oust the man now holed up in Polk street. And the fellow at the podium was Gerry Kaimo, whose unusual hobby of maintaining a political satire site called PLDT.COM has irritated telcos and corrupt government officials alike.

Erap was an easy target -- one more false move, one more mansion, or anonymous bank account would send columnists writing reams of fire and brimstone, and political Web sites would gain new content to entertain surfers. But Erap is gone, noted Kaimo, and we don't have him to kick around anymore. Now what?

MAD AS HELL

Kaimo's lament was probably shared by the thousands of "cyberactivists" that popped up throughout the nation (and around the globe as well) heaping megabytes of scorn daily at the former B-movie actor. Through Web sites (Yehey at one point tracked over 100 sites of the decidedly anti-Erap persuasion), mailing lists, discussion forums, and text messaging, armchair activists armed with modems and Internet access had a field day. Suddenly you didn't have to be a newspaper columnist to air your political views -- mailing list discussions gave anyone the virtual soapbox to be a poor man's Conrado de Quiros or Alex Magno.

True, the traditional street parliamentarians had their own 'Net representation - Bayan for example, has its Web site up (dark glasses required to shade your eyes from all that glaring RED on the screen), and the highly influential KOMPIL (Kongreso ng Mamamayang Pilipino - a wide coalition of civil society groups) conducted a lot of its discourse through a KOMPIL2 mailing list on eGroups.

But by and large most of these sites and discussions were ordinary citizens, a little more 'Net savvy than most, who were collectively (to cop a phrase from Paddy Chayvesky's classic film "Network") "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore". Suddenly we all knew that RIO wasn't a bikini playground in Brazil, but an acronym for the "Resign, Impeach, or Oust" movement that brought together groups of various political backgrounds with the sole objective of kicking out the man in Malacañang.

E-MAIL TO ERAP

For some reason, FMA had invited me to sit in on the discussion panel, quite puzzling since I had never fashioned myself as the crusading political type. My Web site PhilMusic.com is more likely to discuss the merits of Slapshock's latest album over the sacharrine likes of Martin Nievera's umpteenth "Forever" CD, rather than the opening of the second envelope. But as a long time e-mail discussion group junkie, I was pretty familiar with some of the efforts that centered on e-mail communities. And so I had been drafted to talk a bit about the role of e-mail networks as a catalyst for all this cyberactivism.

Egroups.com (which in a fit of capitalist frenzy, had recently been acquired by Yahoo and had thus morphed into Yahoogroups) was a ground zero for most of these efforts, possibly due its ease of use an idiot-friendly web interface. Creating and managing an e- mail community was no longer a job for a hotshot majordomo or listserv jockey. Over 20 anti-Erap discussion groups were created on eGroups alone, mostly by pissed-off citizens.

KOMPIL2 was probably one of the more star-studded of these forums. From the comfort of your ergonomic chair in your home or office you could exchange views with KOMPIL convenors like Vicky Garchitorena (now head of the Presidential Management Staff), Dinky Soliman (now DSWD Secretary in the GMA cabinet), women's rights activist Karen Tañada, and or Kompil secretariat head Dan Songco, and read the soul-stirring letters of Gomburza "running priest" Fr. Robert Reyes. And of course tantalizing minutes of KOMPIL meetings and schedules of mass action events.

But the discussion groups did a lot more than amuse a few couch potatoes and turn NGO luminaries into cyber superstars. More importantly, they did their part in stirring up enough awareness of the RIO issues to bring citizens out from their workstations and into the streets.

FROM THE ERGONOMIC CHAIR TO THE STREETS

Possibly one of the more successful RIO communities that eGroups nurtured was Enteng Romano's eLAGDA. Intended originally as an experiment to get a million virtual signatures to sign an electronic Erap Resign petition, the count actually stopped at around 91,000. I must admit that I was skeptical at turning over yet another e-mail address to Enteng, let alone one million, since Enteng's successful IT events outfit PSSI is notorious for its direct e-mail promotions (which is a nice way of saying "spam").

However, to its credit, eLagda was able to create a vigorous community from those e-mail addresses. It was one of the few cyber groups that managed to make a successful transition from couch potato haven to a real-life movement (composed mainly of professionals and IT types) of global proportions actively engaged in mass actions of their own. Elagda was a real presence at the Stock Exchange walkouts, at the Jericho rally at the Senate, and of course the call to action at EDSA2.

Currently eLagda can almost be characterized as a bona fide activist movement for professionals -- albeit waving Palm Pilots in the air instead of red flags. And with all those systems analysts and management consultants in their midst, it is refreshingly well organized. Sitting through an Elagda Powerpoint presentation is akin to watching a well oiled business plan being pitched. It didn't hurt though, that Elagda volunteer Dondi Mapa was giving the presentation at the FMA forum, and he's the managing director of new economy incubator HatchAsia when he's not ousting presidents.

WHAT NOW?

After Erap was suddenly back playing mah-jong in Greenhills, a wave of relief could be felt sweeping across cyberlandia, immediately followed by the cold feeling of a vacuum. With all the RIO presence on the Net still in place, the question "What do we do now?" was often asked. Luckily, the answers became obvious in a few days as the new priorities bubbled up from recent events. The new agenda -- the arrest, prosecution and conviction of Estrada, and the use of 'Net resources to act as an educational tool and independent watchdog during the coming national elections.

Mapa is associated with both eLagda and a group called FREE3 which happens to be the publisher of the "open-source journalism" driven political news site Guerilla Information Network. Gin maintains a network of over 300 "secret journalists" filing stories on the hot issues of the day. Some of them use real names, others hide behind silly psuedonyms. They probably have their reasons I suppose, so I am not going to divulge that a top GIN honcho "Kumander Robot" is actually one of the founders of the ISP Compass Internet. (oops)

Up on eLagda and FREE3's agenda is a series of new sites such as the electoral portal eBantay.com, which aims to engage in web-based voter information, discussion communities on candidates and election, as well as an informal quickcount process called "Bantay Boto" using Palm PDAs and cell phones.

Also in the works is NTB -- short for the National Text Brigade -- which applies IT systems procedure to tame the wild and wooly world of text chain-messaging. Information for texting is verified by a central secretariat and then passed to the general public through an efficient network of volunteers assigned as "uplinks" and "downlinks". The objective is to use the text network for fast mass broadcast of factual information for a change. It also eliminates wasteful text messaging, thus cutting down on expenses. But whether this will mean fewer Miriam and Tessie jokes in your phone still remains to be seen.

As for Gerry Kaimo, ever the punster, he registered the domain ekulong.com (for ikulong, get it?) and is now scouting around for ideas for content. Mel Velarde, CEO of broadband supplier OneVirtual, was behind the site ErapResign.com and is now repositioning his web presence to tackle the new agenda.

The FMA forum concluded with an optimistic forecast. Cyberactivism is here to stay and the GMA administration may do well to pay heed to this phenomenon. Citizens are keenly watching events and are in constant discussion through technology. We can only hope that there will not be an EDSA 3 in the near future or even in the next 20 years. But if and when that event happens, we can probably expect technology to play an even bigger role in putting it together.

When not writing these subversive left-wing columns, Jim Ayson manages an IT chismis list called the Philippine Cyberspace Review, which you can join by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ph-cyberview.He also runs a number of discussion groups on the Philippine music scene as part of the community features of the website PhilMusic.com. Potshots, suggestions, and juicy gossip can be mailed to jim@philmusic.com.

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